Hi friends, I’m 36 and recently just discovered what ADHD actually is, and am waiting for a consultation/diagnosis from a psychologist (a few more weeks on the wait list I think).
Apologies for the long post, but I’m working through some shit and feel the need to share here.
Anyways, as Ive been processing what having ADHD might mean for my life, Ive been having some incredible “aha!” moments about areas of my life where I feel significant amounts of shame for coming up short.
The one that I’m having now, which I’m very curious to know if anyone has also experienced, is an extreme amount of frustration and stress when my spouse starts “task stacking” with me. She’ll ask me to do something around the house, or with our kiddo, and then while I’m in the middle of doing that thing, she’ll ask me to do another second thing, and then a third, and so on until either all of the tasks are finished or I politely ask her to stop piling work onto my plate.
Relatedly, when we were dating we would spend a lot of time hiking together and its where we got to know each other a lot. However once we got married I began to really dread the days when we went hiking together. My thoughts on this now are that, we would have to wake up super early (which sucks but isnt a deal breaker in itself), but my wife would spend the entire morning in a whirlwind of task stacking, talking to fast to understand, and then have an unbreakable rigid “get out the door” time. Once we were in the cat to go hiking, I was a complete wreck of feeling exhausted and beaten down. I never had any of these frustrations or dread of hiking before we lived together.
This ended up in me coming to the conclusion that maybe I really don’t like hiking at all (which I’m starting to suspect is not actually true), and then fighting back on planning days to go hiking (planning is another massively shameful kryptonite of mine, but that’s another story). She’s also silently blamed me quite a lot for taking away something that she really loved doing together, and I’ve felt this existentially deep shame about “false advertising” for myself while dating as an adventurous spirit, only to turn into a massive homebody once we got married.
Essentially, I’m starting to realize that many of the things that have caused me deep shame and cost me insane amounts of relational capital in my marriage might actually just be symptoms of ADHD.
Can anyone else here validate whether or not these sound like ADHD symptoms you’ve experienced and, if so, whether or not those symptoms have been helped by medication?
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When people start stacking tasks on me, I tell them not to because I’m not going to remember them (my short term memory is terrible, plus it’s stressful). If they ask me to do something later (and start giving me instructions to memorize), I ask them to telephone me at the time they want it done and walk me through it. Plan your life with the assumption that you are dumb so that it takes up as little cognitive bandwidth as possible.
This. You have to accept your shortcomings and tell people the best way to interact with you. My boss at work is also very ADHD and about a decade older than me, but a very smart guy. So I was able to learn a lot from him. One of the first things I caught on to was when someone asked him to do something in-person he would flat out tell them that he would forget and to please send him an email so he could review later. Then he could see that in his inbox as a reminder and would keep that email maked unread until he could get to it, depending on priority level. That was when I realized that is a thing you can do and people appreciate it. It shows that you really do care and you’re commited to doing whatever it is, you just need a little help. Thing is, when people are asking for help they’re not necessarily asking for you to do everything on your own.
When my SO has tasks for me to do, they know not to interrupt me during other tasks and to make a list for me, usually through just a text message.
What I’ve noticed is with the ADHD brain, it is hard to strike a focus. But when you can it is a powerful thing and you can get a lot done in a short amount of time. When someone interrupts that, for me, it can be very frustrating. Who knows when I’ll be able to strike gold again and get all this shit done?
Be honest with your partner and try to find the best way you can to explain your feelings. Ask for help, as people are more receptive to addressing interpersonal issues when you frame it as something you need as opposed to something that the other is doing wrong.
Make lists. Write everything down. If you are hiking the next morning, come up with a plan together to prep as much as you can the day before. Make a list of things you need to do in the morning before leaving, and mutually agree on a departure time in advance. That last part is hard for me, but I promise you it is better than the alternative (leaving it up to fate).
When you have ADHD, planning is both your greatest enemy and your best ally. Enemy because it is hard to make yourself do it, but your ally because if you do it, you can get some initial stress out of the way and when the time comes to do the thing you can spend more time thinking about the thing; or, living in the moment, as they say.
I ask my partner to text me a list. Gives me a reference, and she doesn’t have to interrupt me.
This is a really good idea
My partner and I use a shared note app and collaborate on task lists so it’s less one person having to steer the other but more working together on the plan and figuring out what needs to be done.
We then sort them by priority so that they can be chipped away at, one by one, in order.
Get some little treats, eat one each time someone get a task completed, and any daunting set of tasks turns into a fun little game that starts anything off positively (treats rule).
(Everyone is different so this might not work for you but might give you some ideas for what might work)
Damn, I can see that being a really incredible tool for us. Do you mind if I ask which note app you use?
Google Keep. You can share a note and edit it in real time.
There’s plenty of others out there. Just mentioning the one we use. I know people who use Apple Notes for instance.
We did this too, but right now I’m looking for an alternative to Google. It’s hard finding something lightweight that also syncs between accounts and doesn’t cost a lot.
Great point about one person steering the other, perhaps my method could use some tweaks :D
I ask my partner to text me a list. Gives me a reference, and she doesn’t have to interrupt me.
This is also an excellent strategy at work and other places. If it’s “free” for your boss to dump work on you, they will. It will eventually devolve into meaningless work because it’s easy to just “dump it on PiJiNWiNg”.
Ask them to put the request in an e-mail, a text, a JIRA or whatever and it will force them to evaluate if the task is really worth doing. They’ll often figure the task isn’t “worth their time” for an e-mail and just drop it. Basically you’re giving them a cost that keeps giving you tasks from being “free”.
The one that I’m having now, which I’m very curious to know if anyone has also experienced, is an extreme amount of frustration and stress when my spouse starts “task stacking” with me. She’ll ask me to do something around the house, or with our kiddo, and then while I’m in the middle of doing that thing, she’ll ask me to do another second thing, and then a third, and so on until either all of the tasks are finished or I politely ask her to stop piling work onto my plate.
So relatable that on a worse day I could cry lol. The point I’ve struggled to make is that even if it’s not all things I’m expected to do right now that stacking a list up like that blocks me from doing any of them.
Hey! I got my diagnosis the same age as you are now.
I think giving those struggles a name and knowing what to Google for when looking up help, that is adding adhd to search, made things a bit easier.
Plus knowing I’m not lazy and incompetent is nice. My brain works in a way which makes daily life as most people have it tricky is all.
For me when I get tasks thrown at me while doing something, I just stop. That doesn’t work for me at all.
I need all tasks upfront, then I make a list and order how I’ll do them, hopefully. My partner and I both know this and adjust accordingly. But we’ve been doing this since way before my or her diagnosis.
We both found out in our mid thirties we got adhd. I got diagnosed when I was treated for depression. When reading up on it I basically diagnosed my wife and she got properly diagnosed a while after.
TLDR for your issue Imo In the end it doesn’t matter if it’s an adhd thing or now. Talk it out and find a way to distribute tasks which works for both of you.
This sounds a lot like problems my fiance and I have had. She’s diagnosed, I’m still working on that. She also has OCD. She gets stressed very easily when preparing for a trip, and used to get worse and worse approaching her strict departure time, which has caused some conflict between us, as I am habitually late to things.
We’ve been able to work it out, by just having a conversation about how we get ready. Now I try harder to hit her target time, and she allows a little wiggle room. It’s taken a lot of stress off of us both, making the whole process easier. It’s still a chaotic mess, but at least we’re not fighting about it anymore lol
Hi there, I’m still in the process of finding a therapist but strongly suspect I have ADHD. Task stacking is really stressful for me as well. In addition to that, there are a lot of places and things in our flat that represent unfinished tasks that I have to ignore to get started with anything at all.
Yeah mate, that’s bang on. I was diagnosed at 35, after years of struggling with exactly what you describe. The guilt of ‘losing’ my adventurous streak, the quiet blame for holding someone else back. The shame is real, feeling like you’re never as much as you should or could be. It’s what leaves so many of us late diagnosis types scarred and withdrawn.
The turning around point was the diagnosis. Learning why you are experiencing all of that makes all the difference, gives you a frame of reference to deal with it and improve things. Start healing.
Importantly, even if the doctor says you’re ‘normal’, ie no ADHD, it doesn’t need to change your approach. Recognising who you are and how your mind works can come from a professional, or it can come from you. If I had been taught as a child to recognise my own patterns and deal with them in my own way, I’d have been much happier despite being undiagnosed. Everyone’s fucking weird, some of are just weird enough to get a doctors note (and meds) to go with it. Give yourself some slack, treat your mind with the care it deserves.
Depending on how my wife tries to do the task stacking, I’ll try to send the message by abruptly stopping the task I’m doing and switching to the new task. It’s a fairly quick realization when there’s a sink of half washed dishes when I go to start laundry. She’s gotten much better at it over time though.
Yes, totally, thank you for this. Read it to my spouse. Good luck to you both! I stay up late with a list to do next day stuff if necessary, could be useful for hiking. Significant other says staying up makes me cranky anyways haha but it helps me
